Salutin fired from the Globe

I was more pissed about Margolis getting let go at the SUN.

Maybe it will be Mallick from the Star...

Caissa wrote:

Maybe it will be Mallick from the Star...

One can only wish they would fire Mallick and pick up Margolis.

Dobbin basically said a neo-liberal paper would only have one type of viewpoint, and I am not sure that is true. In fact, the Globe also ran Naomi Klein for quite a while, and the Wall Street Journal famously ran Alexander Cockburn, a flamboyant Marxist (now at Counterpunch), on its op-ed page throughout the roaring 1980s.

Their readers feel they are being generous to the opponents that way, and not unimportantly, they know the adversary.

Being a native informant is big business these days.

Sorry btw but Eric Margolis is another conservative but more like a paleo-conservative like Ron Paul/Pat Buchanan/ Justin

Raimondo and just so happens to be more pro-Palestinian like Raimondo.

2dawall wrote:

Sorry btw but Eric Margolis is another conservative but more like a paleo-conservative like Ron Paul/Pat Buchanan/ Justin

Raimondo and just so happens to be more pro-Palestinian like Raimondo.

Well no not quite. He is actually more interested in talking about Pakistan, India and Afghanistian, as far as I recall. But I guess they count as "Palestinians" But, I thought I would google Margolis on the topic and I came up with this:

Quote:

Another, earlier fool, Secretary of State Alexander Haig, gave Israel's Ariel Sharon a green light in 1982 to invade Lebanon and crush the Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO). Israel's guns and bombs pounded large parts of besieged Beirut to rubble. The invasion was a disaster and led to the deaths of 18,000 to 20,000 Lebanese and Palestinians, and the massacres of 2,000 Palestinians at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps by Israel's neo-fascist Lebanese allies, and the death of 247 US servicemen.

Osama bin Laden noted a few years ago that the 9/11 attacks on New York were in direct retaliation for Israel's brutal bombardment and destruction of downtown Beirut. Not surprisingly, the US media ignored this story.

In 2006, the Bush administration worked out a plan with Israel to again invade Lebanon, crush Hezbullah, then go on to attack Syria and Iran. This plan, like other American-Israeli machinations, collapsed in ignominy. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, struggled to prevent the UN and world powers from ending Israel's attack on Lebanon, which killed over 1,000 civilians and inflicted billions of damage on Lebanon. But Hezbullah's unexpectedly effective resistance turned the invasion into a US-Israeli defeat.

ERADICATING HAMAS

Ahh look... the truth. I don't care what you want to call it, but the elimination of Margolis from the Sun newspaper chain eliminated one of the few consistently truthful sources of information of foreign affairs in the Canadian media. I value that a whole lot more than Heather Mallick's musings about community and Jane Jacobs, someone who can be quoted as easily by Mallick, as she can by the former "conservative" mayoralty candidate Sarh Thomson.

So, I am not going to get all sniffy about someones putative ideological credentials, when it comes to telling the unvarnished truth.

I am not disputing that Eric Margolis provided lots of great information and yes he had written more about Pakistan, Afghanistan etc but he has also written lots about Palestinians so I am not sure how this qualifies what I said before as 'sniffy.' I also did a search on Margolis and Palestinians and got lots articles. My point was to compare him to Raimondo and just pointing out to clarify that he is not entirely progressive. I too wish the Sun had not dropped him but I do see it as their inevitable drift as it is with all of the corporatist media.'

Why clarify? Well here in Winnipeg, for example, the Winnipeg Peace Alliance features articles from Infowars.com, that Alex Jones website. Just want clairty.

Well that sucks.  Salutin's column was a must-read for me.  Shit.

I thought Salutin was a freelancer, so he can't really be "fired".  And its not as if his writing will end just because the Globe isn't publishing him. 

The print news media trend appears to be veering away from mixed formats, with even token dissenting viewpoints cut out in favour of focussed messaging and fluff.  Probably has more to do with targeted advertising and newsprint economics than editorial direction.  And maybe Irshad costs less...

Cueball wrote:

 Manji is making a mint selling copy to non-Muslims who want to hear the "inside" soty on how bad Islam is.

Damn. What sucky news.

And Manji's been playing this song for close to 10 years now. Aren't her 15 minutes over? 

The issue isn't Manji. The issue is a lot of white folks getting together in their board room and deciding that they have the right to promote an anti-Muslim huckster (whose sole qualification for being an authority is a 6 month stint she did at an Islamic school) that fits into their ideological assumptions about what Islam is. I defy you to tell me honestly that you believe the Globe and Mail would hire a lapsed Catholic, whose sole mission is attacking Catholicism, as a regular columnist on their staff.

Not a chance brother.

Why? Because Islam is the enemy, not backward religious conservatism in general. Indeed, I bet if Manji actually spent any time doing a comparison of religions and human rights that also indicted any of the other major religions in Canada, you would never have heard of her.

What makes Manji saleable is the fact that she has license to launch an attack upon our Muslim minority and not be condemned as a bigot, because she can claim to be part of the Muslim community. A line that many will buy because she is not-white, basically.

The fact that she exploits this for her own financial gain, goes against her credibility, as a real human rights campaigner.

I thought that Rick had some pretty good observations on Israel's goings-on.  Seemed to me he fit the progressive template, and wasn't even confusing in his take on the world.

But, back to Irshad Manji...wherever she came from.

Irshad Manji happens to be a Senior Fellow for the neocon-sounding "European Foundation for Democracy":

Quote:

....After claiming to have built an unspecified 'record of success in Europe', EFD lists five goals which include references to human rights and 'Empowering European-based [sic] Muslim and Arab reformers and liberal democrats by ensuring that they, together with EFD fellows, are able to express their views at conferences, media events and elite universities' and 'Continuing to address the growing threat of Iran and it’s terror proxy Hezbollah to Europe by assertively raising public awareness among legislators and opinion leaders'.

It is not made clear how Iran or Hizbullah pose a threat to Europe. Hizbullah's military operations are confined to its native Lebanon and mainly directed at Israel (and formerly its proxy the SLA). Also, despite the ostensible focus on human rights and evident interest in the Middle East no mention is made anywhere of the extensively documented abuses of human rights in Israel. EFD's goals may have a tenuous link to European concerns, but they appear remarkably in line with the known positions of the Israel lobby....[8]

http://www.powerbase.info/index.php?title=European_Foundation_for_Democracy

edited to add:

Transcript of IRSHAD MANJI versus AS’AD ABUKHALIL on Democracy Now regarding the Danish cartoons affair :

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/7/freedom_of_speech_or_incitement_to

====

In propaganda terms, the value (and marketability) of an "apostate", whether formerly from the left (eg. Christopher Hitchens) or nominally from a targeted religion (eg. Hirsi Ali) is an extremely valuable asset in normalizing imperial policy.

Her first offering is on the Globe site, I found it seriously pathetic.

The state of journalism has been in decline for some time. Very few media outlets do any investigative stuff and I find that the only hard hitting news and analysis comes from a handful of gifted columnists. In terms of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon etc I would definitely put Margolis and Fisk on the must read list. I like Rick Salutin's columns and unlike Manji, he is thoughtful and know how to write. I think Linda McQuaig is still my favourite among Canadian journalists.

It's unfortunate that the G&M is moving towards complete irrelevancy. There are lots of Canadians that believe it to be a more informed and open-minded paper than the National Post or any other former Southam papers. Not sure if they will stick with it and be convinced that they are getting quality news and opinion. Hopefully, reasoned people will abandon it in droves.

Maybe more people will check out Rabble, Straight Goods or Tyee to get an alternative perspective. There aren't too many sources left.

This move toward Manji may hurt the G&M in the Toronto area with how many 2nd generation Pakistani-Canadians find her so offensive, even the upwardly mobile business types.

2dawall wrote:

This move toward Manji may hurt the G&M in the Toronto area with how many 2nd generation Pakistani-Canadians find her so offensive, even the upwardly mobile business types.

Not to worry, they probably plan to fill that loss with the Iranian-Canadian community in Toronto instead:-)

sanizadeh wrote:

contrarianna wrote:

edited to add:
Transcript of IRSHAD MANJI versus AS’AD ABUKHALIL on Democracy Now regarding the Danish cartoons affair :

http://www.democracynow.org/2006/2/7/freedom_of_speech_or_incitement_to

====

... and then that Abukhalil guy, man, what an arrogant hypocrit ("I am all for freedom of speech, but I allow you to criticize one religion only if you criticize the other ones too, and BTW, never expect my side to do the same...").

Hi, sanizadeh

You have put words in quotes as if they were a reliable paraphrase of Abukhalil's tenor. Which "side" is the atheistic Abukhalil representing, according to you? Obviously, he isn't empowered to "allow" or disallow anyone from saying anything by his claim that there is a double standard when it comes to a passion for "free speech".
What part of his description of "selective secularism" he mentions do find outrageous or even untrue?
(As for hypocritical, the "I am shocked" posturing of Manji when her even-handedness was questioned seems a better example).

There is a more comprehensive look at Manji's posturing and her book in two parts is by Justin Podur in 2003.

Most telling for me is her chutzpah in her citing Tariq Ali's "Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads, and Modernity" without the balanced context of his genuine humanism:     

Quote:

...All of this is described and analyzed in a book that actually does what Irshad Manji says she is trying to do: Tariq Ali's 'Clash of Fundamentalisms' (29)   Manji cites his book several times, but does not present his argument or analysis in her book (30) .  Ali argues that the Muslim world needs to go through the kind of reformation the Christian world went through, the reformation - influenced, incidentally, by Muslim and Jewish scholarship and learning -- that led the Christian world out of medieval theocracy.  He argues that this reformation is all the more urgent because the world is increasingly in the grip of another kind of fundamentalism - that of neoliberal economics and militarism.  Unlike Manji, Ali looks at modern history and finds ways that one fundamentalism helped to create the other.  The Taliban, the Mujahaddin, and indeed Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda grew out of the jehadis funded, trained, and armed by the United States to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.  The Saudi regime and the other repressive monarchies of the Middle East are propped up by the West in exchange for oil and the suppression of their own people's desires for self-determination.  Independent nationalism, secularism, and leftist movements in that region were savagely and repeatedly attacked by the US, sometimes using the religious groups.  Ali does not bring this history up in order to exonerate Muslims of their responsibilities, but to help understanding of the context.  All Manji would have had to do was read the rest of the book she cites numerous times.  Ali's book implicitly argues for a world free of any fundamentalisms, in which people use their own reason and their own moral sense and solidarity to guide them....

http://www.zcommunications.org/a-multifaceted-fraud-by-justin-podur

http://www.zcommunications.org/a-multifaceted-fraud-part-2-by-justin-podur

[warning, the articles are fine to view, but some of the old links within it are dead, or show as being compromised by malware]

Interesting column from Robert Fulford:

This lefty was often wrong, but I'm going to miss him

Quote:

I disagreed with whatever Rick Salutin wrote in his Globe and Mail column - on capitalism, socialism, U.S. foreign policy, free trade, Israel or anything else.

Nevertheless, for two decades I never failed to read him, every Friday. Sadly, the Globe has eliminated his column, considering it unsuitable for the refurbished format that appeared yesterday.

What made me Rick Salutin's loyal reader? Experience demonstrates that I can learn a great deal from writers I disagree with. More important, his style has always attracted me. His prose has a sense of life, not a quality universally found in Globe columnists. He has his own voice, whether the song he sings is satirical, hysterical or as glum as Eeyore's. And he writes as if something is at stake.

Is it really so unusual "around here to hear people praise the writing of their ideological adversariers"? Up thread I was taken to task for praising Eric Margolis. Though I agree some peoples ideological views seem to dampen their critical eye, finding only points to criticize those who disagree with them -- what is difficult about that is that it takes a certain amount of introspection and intellectual honesty to see beyond ones own ideology.

I heard Flannagan say he is from the states. This is very interesting. Again another american teling canada to be more right wing, like diane francis..I only bring this up because of a discussion on war resisters. The prominance of ex pat americans that have a right wing view vs the number that have a leftwing view is completely unbalanced. Surely there are americans that live here that are public figures that are left. Maybe Spider Robinson the Sci Fi author? But can someone help me out on this. WHo that is left in our national media circle is american? As pointed out eric margolis is american but isn't left.

Thanks geroge. I am just curious as to americans in the mainstream that like the canada they came to.